


Airport Madness

by Dragonsteamfan



Series: Little Sammy [2]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Father Dowling Mysteries, Supernatural, due South
Genre: Gen, Minor Character Death, Minor Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-04
Updated: 2011-08-04
Packaged: 2017-10-22 05:15:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/234237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dragonsteamfan/pseuds/Dragonsteamfan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean and Sammy take a little trip to Chicago.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Title: Airport Madness  
Series: Little Sammy  
Summery: Dean and Sammy take a trip. Too bad things don’t go as planned  
Disclaimer: I don’t own anything from Supernatural, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Father Dowling Mysteries, Due South or the movie Unaccompanied Minors which gave me the bunny all gift wrapped.  
Warnings: Dean’s first crush and 2 slightly graphic death scenes.  
Rating: Teen just in case

 

John Winchester was a demon hunter by vocation and a mechanic by trade. He was also a con man but only when he needed to be. But most of all, he was a father to two young boys, one of whom was marked by a demon. He didn’t know why his youngest was marked but it didn’t matter; he wouldn’t let the demon have his son. The demon had killed his wife and he was determined to kill it before it did whatever it wanted to his son. He was also determined that no one else should have to suffer as his family had.

John hated to do it, but he had no choice. He couldn’t take Dean and Sam on this hunt, it was too dangerous to have small children around, even if Dean was eleven and a better man than most John knew. Rawhead and Bloodybones weren’t particular about a person’s personality or abilities to be responsible. All they cared about was a person’s age, and as far as they were concerned, the younger a person was, the better they tasted.

The trouble was there wasn’t anyone close that he felt he could trust enough to watch his boys. He couldn’t leave them alone while he hunted down the monster; he’d made that mistake before. No one had been hurt, but it was too close as far as he was concerned. Faced with this situation, there was only one thing he felt he could do. He had to send the boys to Pastor Jim and Jim was on the other side of the country. That meant like quite a few other single parents, he was sending his sons cross country by plane, alone. That thought scared him more than the monster.

“Mary, I sure hope you can watch over our boys until they get to Jim,” he whispered as he packed the boys backpacks. John only knew that Mary was his guardian angel because Sammy had told him so two years before. Of course then he had just wanted to know why Mommy didn’t have wings like other angels he had seen. John still didn’t know why some angels had wings and some didn’t but he had started thanking God and Mary after every hunt. He knew it was because of God that he still had Mary and because of Mary that he got that extra bit of help that he needed when he was making the world a bit safer for their boys.

He called the boys and knelt down in front of them. Because he knew it was Mary that was watching over them, he had made sure that there was no way she would be ashamed of the way he was raising their boys. That meant that although they were poor and more than a little strange to most of the people around them, they were also as honest as it was possible to be. That meant that this week, they were living in a tent up in one of the national parks. John wasn’t about to turn to credit card fraud or stealing in front of Mary like some of the other Hunters did.

“Ok boys, listen up. This is one of those times when we’re going to have to be less than honest in order to be safe. I don’t like it, but we don’t have a choice. You need to get on a plane to go stay with Pastor Jim. I’m calling in a favor for the tickets, so you don’t need to worry about how we can afford them. I saved someone and they were happy to tell me that I could have plane tickets any time I wanted them.

“Now, I’ll drive out to Pastor Jim’s when I’m done with this hunt. I want you to be good for Pastor Jim and don’t give him any trouble. Do you understand boys?”

“Yes sir,” Dean and Sam chorused.

“Good, now here’s the part that’s not so good. Dean, the law says you can’t have weapons in the airport or on the planes, but I can’t let you travel by yourselves without weapons. The security people are going to look through your backpacks, so the only things that are in there are the rock salt bombs you made and the protection amulets. I can’t let you take your gun. I’m sorry, but they won’t let you on the plane if they find out you have it. It won’t make it through the metal detectors. The security people could even arrest both of us. What I am going to do is give each of you two knives, one made of silver and one made of stone. Neither of them will set off the alarms.

“I want you to hide them in your boots. Here are some more rock salt bombs, put them in your coat pockets.” John handed both of the boys the water balloons filled with rock salt and made sure that the protection charms they wore were still in place and didn’t need to be replaced as the boys filled their pockets. “Ok, let’s load up; the plane isn’t going to wait for us.”

The camp was quickly broken down and their gear was loaded into the Impala. The trip was fairly long, but it wasn’t boring thanks to the boys in the back seat. The bad joke contest was put to a halt by John when Dean started getting a little to adult for Sam (and his mother). Then they switched to Hunting stories, the gorier the better as far as Dean was concerned. Sammy was all eyes and ears over the, unfortunately only somewhat, exaggerated stories that Dean had heard at the Roadhouse, a bar that served mostly Hunters where John sometimes got some work or information. John would have been worried about the stories if he didn’t know that Sammy loved them, especially if he knew that the Hunters in the stories had survived the Hunt because he knew them.

The boys got through the airline security without any problems, mostly because John had left his weapons, except for a stone knife, amulets and rock salt bombs, in the car. John charmed the airline attendant into promising to watch over the boys for the flight, not that he needed to. With the innocent puppy dog eyes that the boys were giving her they were a shoo in for special treatment.

As he watched the plane with his sons pull away from the terminal, John sent up heartfelt prayer. “Please send someone to watch over my sons, Lord. I can’t go on without them.” Then he turned away and firmly turned his mind to the Hunt. There was nothing more that he could do for his boys. It was time to go save someone else’s children from a monster.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Getting on the airplane wouldn’t have been so bad if the lady who showed them to their seats hadn’t insisted that Dean take the window seat. Dean did not want to look out the window, why would he want to see how far away from the ground he was? He wasn’t bothered by how far up they were, it just wasn’t something that interested him. What did bother him was that it put Sammy in the middle seat, right next to someone else; someone that hadn’t been cleared as safe to be around his little brother.

Sure Sammy went to school just like he did, but all of the teachers, and most of the students were checked out, either by Dad or by him. So the idea of Sammy sitting right next to a stranger, without Dean in between them really bothered Dean. That made him very suspicious when the flight attendant came back a second time. That she was leading a small girl who looked terrified didn’t help any, although Dean didn’t think she was dangerous.

The little girl was somewhere between his and Sammy’s age and had dark red hair. She was so scared she looked like she was about to jump out of her skin. Dean wasn’t surprised when Sammy leaned over the arm rest and whispered so that the attendant couldn’t hear, “It’s ok, your guardian angel is watching over you.”

“I’m Jewish, I’m not sure if I’m supposed to believe in guardian angels,” the little girl whispered back.

“That doesn’t matter,” Sammy said firmly. “Everyone who needs one gets one, even if they don’t believe in them.”

The little girl smiled through her fear. “I’m Willow; I’m going to meet my mom and dad in Chicago. They’re on the lecture circuit but my nanny died so I have to go stay with them until they find me a new nanny. Do you know how a plane works? I do, I researched it!”

Dean groaned to himself, there was no way he could have gotten stuck with TWO Sammys! The airline’s take off procedures interrupted Willow’s lecture to Dean’s relief. The ‘what to do in case of a crash’ information worried him, a little. He tried to shove the feeling down and memorize what the lady was saying. ‘It was just like when Dad was teaching him,’ he thought. ‘You can’t do anything about the problem if you don’t know what you’re doing, and it pays to be prepared. That was why they always checked people out even when they weren’t hunting, because you never knew what could happen.’

Too bad all the preparedness lecture did was scare Willow more. Sammy had all of his little genius mind concentrating on getting Willow to calm down, which left Dean to take care of the rest of everything that needed to be done. For Dean that meant while he was stuck in the seat he worried about everyone and everything around him. It was his job to take of Sammy when his Dad couldn’t. So since he couldn’t do anything else, Dean sat there and worried.

Things probably wouldn’t have been so bad if it wasn’t for the weather. From the moment they got into the air there was nothing but turbulence. Sammy was doing his best to calm Willow down, but the drops the aircraft made had her crying for someone to please stop the plane, she didn’t like this. Dean was about ready to take off the head of the jerk ahead of them who kept saying we’re all going to die for the whole trip, but the worst part was the sound and smell of people getting air sick all around him.

Well, the worst natural thing was the people getting air sick. The worst unnatural thing was when he looked out the window. He could see small green forms running up and down the wing of the plane, going into the engines just before one of the hiccups. He started saying the exorcists prayers Pastor Jim had taught him but nothing happened because they couldn’t hear him. He said them the entire flight.

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Pastor Jim was praying for patience and strength. Not only did he have two little boys, sons of one of his ‘special flock’ on the way to stay with him, but he also had a young nun that had been sent to help him for no reason that he could figure out. Sister Stephanie, or Sister Steve as she liked to be called, was a native of Chicago and was strong in her faith but she wasn’t the sort of nun he had been expecting. She wasn’t a scholar or a housekeeper type or heaven forbid, someone sent to keep him in line. No, she was the sort of enthusiastic young nun who was most often sent to a parish with lots of children. How was he going to keep the boys safe, keep Sister Steve in the dark about his other work and still complete his duties?

“Father Jim, I’m sorry, Pastor Jim, are you sure you should be driving to the airport today? It’s awfully nasty out there,” Sister Steve asked. She didn’t know if the older priest was able to drive under these weather conditions. The last priest she had worked with hadn’t been able to drive at all. “I could go and collect the boys. I’m very good at driving in weather like this.”

Pastor Jim sighed. It wasn’t the weather that had him worried. It was the fact that several of his elderly parishioners were in the church. They wouldn’t let him out of the building without a long talk, especially with the weather being as foul as it was. The good thing was that everyone was headed downstairs to the community room and they had brought lots of food and drinks. He had to get the storm watch gathering organized. His church was one of the storm shelters both for the homeless and for those elderly people who didn’t have family to check up on them. When storms gathered, especially in the winter, everyone who could gathered in his community room to wait out the storm with hot drinks, good food and good friends.

“All right, Sister, but the truth is if it wasn’t for the people downstairs I’d be going anyway. You they’ll forgive for going out to the airport, me they never would. Now, the Winchester boys aren’t like any other boys you’ve ever met. Dean is the older one. He’s eleven years old and he won’t let you near his brother under any circumstances until I tell him you’re ok. He also won’t go with you until you recite the vesper prayers in Latin with him.”

“Well, that’s the best code phrase I’ve ever heard of,” Steve said smiling. She couldn’t wait to meet this young man.

“Sammy is an angel of a child. You could never hope to meet anyone better natured. He’s seven and their father is sending them to stay with me while he does a job. It wouldn’t be safe to leave the children alone and I’m one of the very few people he trusts with his sons.” Pastor Jim looked sternly at Sister Steve. “Don’t make me regret sending you in my stead. I owe John Winchester my life and so do a lot of other people. His sons are his life. Nothing matters to him more than they do.”

Sister Steve nodded. She knew several single fathers whose world revolved around their sons and daughters. She understood exactly what Pastor Jim was saying. Jim on the other hand, knew that she didn’t, not really. He couldn’t tell her that she was picking up the only children of one of the finest demon hunters in the United States. Or that the man wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if she harmed his boys. “No problem, Pastor Jim. I’ll get them here in one piece.”


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

“That’s it, that’s all. Chicago International is now closed down people. Reroute any and all air traffic away from us,” the manager of the air traffic control tower was adamant. If the last plane in hadn’t been having engine trouble he wouldn’t have let it land. They had been struggling all morning to keep the runways clear. One by one the airport had to shut them down due to snow and ice buildup until even keeping one open had become all but impossible.

The tower crew’s sighs of relief were audible from all sides. Keeping an airport open despite the weather was one of the hardest parts of their jobs. Only a crash on a runway was more difficult and the men and women were grateful to have escaped that tragedy today. It had been touch and go right until the last plane had touched the ground. Once it was on the ground a plane was someone else’s headache.

And a headache they were because the runways weren’t the only thing that was covered in ice and snow. The roads in and out of the airport were mostly closed unless trucks and cars had chains and even then they traveled at a snails pace. Most of the travelers who had actually made it to the airport were stuck there, including the small group of unaccompanied minors that security had stashed in a conference room.

To Dean’s disgust, this was where the flight attendant had led his little kid train. Willow had refused to let go of Sammy’s hand and there was no way that he was going to let anyone else hold Sammy’s other hand. The glare he had sent her when she had reached for Sammy had been effective at pausing her long enough for Sammy to grin at her and grab his hand. She had smiled indulgently at Sammy and approvingly at Dean before leading them through the airport to the conference room.

Now he had set both Willow and Sammy down in a corner so he could keep one eye on both of them and one eye on everyone else who was in the room or might come in. With an ease born of several years of practice and his father’s training Dean sized up the room’s occupants. Sammy of course, was his responsibility to protect and Willow had quickly fallen into that category as well. There was one security guard; old, fat, bored out of his skull. He would be no problem for Dean to deal with. Now all he had to do was guard Sammy and Willow until Pastor Jim showed up.

 

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Sister Steve said a thankful prayer as she finally reached a parking structure that wasn’t blocked or closed. She was late but she was here and she could call Pastor Jim from a lobby phone once she found the boys. As unaccompanied minors they would be under the supervision of security until someone, namely her, came to pick them up.

After the five minute walk from the outside of the airport to the inside turned into a nearly 25 minute excursion, Sister Steve knew that she and the boys weren’t going back to the church tonight. The weather was just too bad. She stumbled inside the doors and hurried off to find security. She patted down her pockets as she put her gloves away. All she had on her was a deck of cards and a Bible. Well, a boy couldn’t learn the basics of poker too soon. That should keep them occupied until the weather cleared. ‘What could they use as stakes?’ she thought. Then she paused at one of the many little shops as she saw a large bag of peanut m’n’m’s. ‘Those would do nicely.’

She purchased the bag, not noticing the silver flash in the eyes of the clerk. He, however, noticed her all too clearly. Young, pure if that nun’s outfit was any indication, and thanks to the weather, all he had to do was dump her body somewhere on the way to the airport. No one would question her death under these weather conditions. He watched as she made her way down to the security office, all the while making plans.

One of the security guards was more than willing to take the pretty young nun down to where they were stashing the brats. Maybe he’d get really lucky and she’d take the lot of them out of his hair. He hated kids and being responsible for any of them, even second hand was enough to give him an ulcer.

Sister Steve was just thankful to get to the boys right away. They weren’t hard to spot in the conference room as there were only three children in there. They were eating doughnuts with a little redheaded girl at a corner of the large table. She didn’t think it was a coincidence that Dean was sitting in a position that could be best described as in between his little brother and the rest of the world. She’d known more than one big brother that had or was currently raising their younger siblings. It was a sad fact of being poor. Even if they had more than one parent, it was often all that the parents could do to make sure that their children were fed, clothed and housed; which often left the raising of the children to the eldest child.

The hand-me down clothes, the suspicious look in his eyes and the way he was guarding both his baby brother and the little girl told Steve all she needed to know. They may be poor, but these Winchesters were good and proud men. Even little Sammy was a gentleman, handing over a particularly good pastry to the little girl while he took the much more battered one.

“Dean and Sammy Winchester?” she asked as she walked up to the table.

“Who wants to know?” Dean demanded. The lady in the nun outfit made him uncomfortable. Nuns were not supposed to look like that. They were supposed to look like Sister Mary, an old hag that tried to make him eat canned spinach. Yuck!

“I’m Sister Steve. Pastor Jim sent me because a bunch of old ladies have him stuck at the church passing out coffee and cookies.” She crossed herself and began the Vesper prayer. Dean, and to her surprise Sammy as well, immediately joined in. Their Latin was perfect, better than some of the clergy that she knew.

“You know another language! What is it? Can you teach me? Who taught you?” Willow asked amazed. She knew Hebrew and English but that was because her father insisted that she know her heritage. Whatever the boys and the nun were speaking sounded kind of like the medical stuff in her mother’s books. She guessed that made it Latin.

“It’s Latin and our dad taught us. He’s the best!” Sammy bragged. He loved his family with his whole heart. “He sent us to stay with Pastor Jim while he’s on a hunting job. It was too dangerous for us to help this time but most of the time we get to. Dean helps with the hunting supplies and I get to help with the research.” He didn’t need Dean’s poke to remind him that he wasn’t supposed to talk about just what kind of hunting their father did.

“Wow! I wish I could help like that. My parents are psychiatrists and they can’t even talk about their work, but I know I could do something to help if they’d let me. Maybe I could learn how to run the computer for them. My dad is always forgetting stuff and that would help.” Willow said wistfully.

Sister Steve sat down at the table. “Well, we’re stuck here for a while so why don’t you learn to play poker with us? You never know when that might come in handy.” The kids perked right up as she sat down, pulled out the bag of m’n’m’s and started shuffling the deck.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Rawhead and Bloodybones were one of the most despicable monsters John Winchester knew. They took children that wandered off, or really went anywhere near their lairs and ate them raw. If the children’s parents or adults were with the children the damned things would crush the skulls of the adults just to get at the children - and this one wasn’t being quiet about its activities either.

Three families with eight children between them had gone missing in the mountain park fifty miles from where he and his boys had been staying for the last few months, over the course of the last four years. That was far too close and far too often for John’s peace of mind. The last one was the day before he had put his boys on the plane to Jim’s in Chicago. Now he was part of the volunteer effort to find the lost family, not that he expected to find anyone still alive. No, he knew that only if he were lucky would he find one of the three missing children, the rest were more than likely to have been killed and eaten already.

He was teamed up with a search party of about eight people. They were to search the area just to the north of where the family was last seen. That would put him at the edge of what he judged was the monster’s territory. ‘God please let there be at least one still alive,’ he prayed.

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It took about an hour for someone to come into the conference room with the phone that Sister Steve had requested. She had remembered Pastor Jim’s admonishment that Dean would not go with her or allow his brother unless he had told Dean that it was alright, even with the safety code. Until then she saw that he was perfectly ok with letting her teach them poker as long as he stayed between her and the other children. She smiled to herself. This one was a protector, and she had no doubt that he would remain so for his entire life.

After the security guard had plugged in the phone and went back to his seat, Sister Steve pushed the phone over to Dean. “You know the number for the church, right?” she asked. Dean nodded. “Ok, well could you tell Pastor Jim that we’re kind of snowed in here and we’ll leave for the church when we can?”

Dean nodded decisively and started dialing. Sister Steve wasn’t sure that he caught her unspoken message that she knew he didn’t trust her yet and that it was alright with her. Trust had to be earned, especially with kids who had taken their responsibilities to heart like Dean did. She was also aware from the wary glances that he was still giving her that someone had probably called Child Services on his family at least once before. “Pastor Jim? This is Dean Winchester.”

Pastor Jim had been expecting the phone call. There was no way that Dean wouldn’t call once he learned that Jim was stuck at the church and wouldn’t be picking him up. “Did Sister Steve let you call or did you boys run away from her? I hope you haven’t led the poor girl on a merry chase through the airport,” he said, grinning at the image. Dean and Sammy were good boys, but John was teaching them everything he knew and it would be far too easy for the boys to give Sister Steve the slip.

“No sir!” Dean said firmly. “We’re sitting in a conference room waiting for the storm to stop. Sister Steve is teaching us to play poker and we’re using m’n’m’s!”

“Good, now Sister Steve is twenty five, white with blue eyes and dark red hair. She smiles a lot and yes, she does know how to play poker and tell her that I said it was ok to teach you boys how to cheat. She’s very good at that because her father is a bookie and he taught her. Now, are you boys armed?” Pastor Jim knew that the boys had to have something on them because John wouldn’t leave his boys defenseless.

“Just with stuff that would get through security,” Dean said vaguely. He didn’t know just how much Sister Steve was aware of and didn’t want to make any of those kinds of mistakes. It was his job to make sure that Sammy didn’t make them.

“Well, Sister Steve is an innocent, so make sure you watch over her too. I don’t expect that there will be any problems but you never can tell.”

“Yeah, just wait ‘til I tell you what happened on the plane!” Dean shivered. He never wanted to ride on a plane again! EVER! “Sister Steve says that we’ll head for the church when we can,” Dean looked up to see the security guard getting his throat cut by a large man behind him. “Pastor Jim,” he whispered, “We’re in trouble. Gotta go!” The security guard had made no sound and as Dean was the only one not concentrating on their cards, he was the only witness to the murder. He had in fact only seen it because his father had made sure to teach him that whenever he was on the phone he was to do a perimeter sweep with his eyes every few seconds and had made sure that Dean could do it without anyone realizing he was. The man didn’t know that Dean had seen him.

He hung up the phone and reached over and squeezed Sammy’s arm twice in quick succession. Sammy immediately dropped his cards, grabbed Willow by the arm and dragged her and his backpack under the table. That was something else they had practiced. There was something bad in the room and it was time to run. At the same time Dean leaned back in his chair and kicked the man’s arm just as he was reaching towards Sister Steve. That caused his arm to fly up and Sister Steve to fall onto the floor.

Dean followed that up with getting one knee onto the top of the table and met the man who was now lunging towards him with a hiking boot to the throat. He grabbed his backpack off of the table and slid down next to Sister Steve as the man fell to the floor choking. He grabbed Sister Steve by the arm and did his best to drag her out of the room after Sammy and Willow who were already running through the only door to the room.

They saw the body of the guard and Willow was crying but Sammy just pulled her along out into the hallway. They had to get away. By the time Sister Steve and Dean reached the door Sister Steve was on her feet and had Dean by the hand. She too saw the guard and realized what was happening. Her legs were longer so she ended up pulling him as the man got off the floor and started chasing them. Dean knew then that the man wasn’t human. His kick hadn’t been to incapacitate. It had been to kill - because there was no way he was going to let a murderer touch his brother or the ladies. If the man had been human, he would have died from a crushed larynx and asphyxiation.


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Pastor Jim stared at the phone in shock for a moment and then hurriedly hung it up and then called the airport and demanded to be put through to security. He knew what Dean classified as trouble and while most would assume that it meant the same thing to him as it did to most kids, Jim knew better. What most kids called trouble, Dean called getting into a mess, and the word trouble was kept for serious situations; situations like the one his father was dealing with at the moment. He spared a moment while he was being transferred to pray not only for the boys and Sister Steve, but for John and his hunt as well.

Pastor Jim’s call had been routed to the Chief of Security for the airport, a man named William James. “This is Pastor Jim Murphy at St. George’s church. I was on the phone with one of my parishioners, an eleven year old boy named Dean Winchester. He and his seven year old brother flew into your airport tonight and my assistant Sister Stephanie went to pick them up. She was with them in a conference room and Dean called me to tell me that they were going to wait out the storm there. While Dean was on the phone he said that they were in trouble and he was forced to hang up. Please go and check on them.”

James had seen a young nun come into the office earlier and promised the Pastor that he would go and check up on them. “Daniels! What did you do with that nun who came in here a while ago?” he asked as he got up and pulled out a walkie talkie from his desk drawer.

Daniels snorted; he thought it was a pity that good looking a girl was a nun. “She went down to the conference room where we had the unaccompanied minors in sir. She asked for a phone to hook up in there and I brought it down about ten minutes ago.”

“Well like looks like there was some trouble down there. You stay here while we go check it out.” James gestured to the other security officer in the office.

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Sammy could hear Dean behind him yelling, “Sammy, MICE!” That was a code that their dad had taught them. It was used when they were in trouble and needed to hide and keep moving, just like little mice did in the walls. He started searching for a place and saw a sign showing the way to where people could pick up their luggage. He turned and still pulling Willow, ran for the sign. He knew just what to do.

They had to go down an escalator, and although Sammy knew he was never supposed to run on one, he also knew that there was a monster chasing them and that they didn’t have a choice. “Please help Willow get down without falling!” he said to her guardian angel as he ran. Willow was too busy trying to run from the bad man to listen to him. They made it down the escalator, although he could tell that Dean wasn’t happy with having to run down the escalator from the way he was yelling. If Dean did anything he didn’t like this trip he was going to tell Daddy on him for swearing! He idly wondered how many pushups Dean was going to get as punishment.

Sammy ran to the right at the bottom of the escalator and saw the luggage carrousel. He ran over to it and pushed Willow up on to it. Then he jumped up on it himself and pushed her down so that they passed through the hole in the wall that separated the carrousel area from the room where they unloaded and sorted the luggage. “Are you ok Willow?” he asked panting.

“uhuh,” Willow whispered. She knew she wasn’t supposed to be back here. She hoped that they didn’t get into too much trouble. They were running from a very bad man maybe that would help keep them out of trouble. She shuddered as she remembered how that nice security guard had looked as they had run out of the room.

Dean stopped swearing when he saw Sammy drag Willow onto the carrousel. He should have known that his little brother had an idea. “Come on, Sister Steve!” he said as he ran for where Sammy and Willow were disappearing.

Sister Steve had heard a lot of creative cussing while she was growing up. Her father had taken her with him from time to time to his job as bookie and the men who frequented such places weren’t known for keeping a check on their mouths, especially when they were drunk. Dean had them beat. Of course while she didn’t approve of cussing, she could fully understand why he was when she saw Sammy and Willow running DOWN the down escalator, and then they went and jumped on the luggage carrousel. If it wasn’t for the fact that they were running from a murderer, she’d be having a very long talk with all of them later. As it was, she thought that she’d let it slide this time, as running (even down an escalator) was far better than letting a man like that catch them. She jumped up on the carrousel and was glad that Dean got on right behind her.

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James walked into the conference room only to stop in shock. Mitchell, who should have been sitting in the chair next to the door, was lying on the floor next to the chair in a puddle of blood. He could see that Mitchell’s throat had been cut. For a moment all James could think about was that Mitchell was a year away from retirement. He should have been safe watching over a bunch of kids, not dead and bloody on the floor.

James shook himself out of his shock and didn’t bother to try and call Johnson back from the bathroom across the hallway where Johnson had bolted at his first sight of Mitchell. If it wasn’t for the fact that he had some previous combat experience he was sure that he would have joined the kid. He quickly looked around the room. There were cards and m’n’m’s scattered over the table and several of the chairs were overturned. There was no sign of the nun or any children. He pulled out his walkie talkie, “Daniels! How many kids were in the conference room with the nun?”

“Three sir, two boys and a girl,” Daniels could tell that something was wrong from the way James was barking into the walkie talkie. “They were fine when I left them. They were playing cards and eating m’n’m’s from a big bag.” As much as he disliked kids of all types he did not want anything bad to happen to them. He just didn’t want to be around them personally.

“Alert everybody we have, get them looking for the kids and the nun and then call the cops. Someone came in and killed Mitchell, and it looks like they either took the nun and the kids or the killer chased them outa here. Either way, we’ve got a big problem on our hands.” James dropped the walkie talkie down from his mouth and held it at his side. “Oh boy do we got a problem here.”


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

Sammy pulled Willow off of the conveyor belt and started running again. It was time to look for a place to hide. He scanned the area full of yet more conveyor belts, most of which were running empty because the airport was basically shut down. He couldn’t see any difference so he waited until he saw Sister Steve coming through the hole in the wall and then took off, this time to the left because he’d gone right the last time.

Dean was getting more and more uncomfortable with Sister Steve. Not that she wasn’t a nice lady and all, (she had even taught him how to play poker and Pastor Jim said she would teach him how to cheat!) but from where he was on the conveyor belt he could see an awful lot of her bare legs. Maybe it was like Bobby had told Dad about that married lady he was watching at the Roadhouse a while back. Dad had hit him and said that Bobby should keep his mind out of the gutter because she was a married lady. Bobby had laughed and said that just because he couldn’t touch didn’t mean he couldn’t look. ‘Did that work with nuns too? He’d have to ask Dad later, right now he had to catch up with Sammy.’

He hopped off the belt to see Sister Steve once more running after Sammy as he dragged Willow through a maze of conveyor belts, luggage racks, and other things he didn’t recognize. He was grateful that his dad made them practice running every morning. He wasn’t even breathing hard yet, unlike Sister Steve and Willow. Sammy seemed to know that they needed to rest and he suddenly made a sharp left turn and slid into a shadow. Willow tumbled down and Sister Steve dropped next to her and shoved her into the shadow, which turned out to be a small space under two conveyor belts, next to a large chute thing and partially blocked by a luggage rack. It was a perfect place to hide and let the monster get ahead of them.

Dean made sure that he was the last one in, turned around so that he was facing the entrance and pulled the knives out of his boots. He knew that his rock salt water balloons wouldn’t do any good because he had hit the monster and knocked him down. That meant that the monster was corporeal. Dad said that meant that it was solid and ghosts weren’t solid. Salt only worked on ghosts.

Sammy crept up next to him and Dean could see that he too had pulled out his knives. Dean remembered what his Dad had said when he had finally given them their knives. ‘These aren’t toys. These are to defend yourselves and those around you from monsters. Never, ever use them for anything else. You could hurt yourselves, or worse each other, if you aren’t careful.’

The thought of hurting Sammy (and for Sammy hurting his big brother) was enough to make sure that they used the knives with extreme caution, especially after seeing Caleb babbling apologies and sewing up a knife wound on their dad after a hunt. Caleb had thrown his knife at a spirit and had hit their dad. It had brought home to them just how dangerous knives were, and that was just what was needed now, they had ladies to protect. He looked back and saw that Sister Steven had Willow on her lap and was rocking her with Willow’s head in her shoulder to stifle Willow’s sobbing. He could barely hear her and he and Sammy weren’t five feet away from them. That was good; if they were lucky the monster wouldn’t hear her either.

“Sammy,” he whispered in his little brother’s ear. “See if you can see what kind of monster that is. You’re really good at figuring out which monster is which.” He wasn’t lying. Sammy was really good at that. That was one of the reasons Dad had him help with the research, that and Sammy really, really liked those old books that put Dean to sleep every single time. Sammy nodded and then they could hear the pounding footsteps of the monster as it ran by their hiding place.

They waited until they could no longer hear the sound and then turned to each other. “I crushed its throat, so it’s corporeal. Dad says that means it’s solid and ghosts aren’t solid.” Dean said.

“It had silvery eyes, kind of and it looked like it had two faces, one on top of the other.” Sammy was frustrated because he couldn’t really explain what he had seen. “The top face looked like it was a ghost or something.”

“You mean like it was a possessed person?” Dean whispered shocked and worried. They couldn’t do an exorcism. They didn’t have any of the stuff that was needed to do that and Dean didn’t know the right prayers. You needed special prayers to get a demon out of a person and send it back to hell, Pastor Jim said so. He had told Dean that when he was old enough to help he would teach Dean the special prayers but he hadn’t done it yet.

“No, Pastor Jim says when a person is possessed, their eyes turn black. That monster’s eyes were silver, kind of flashy,” Sammy said stumped.

“Silvery flashy eyes, solid and two faces, one on top of the other,” Dean muttered to himself.

“Oh yeah, and the one on the bottom was really ugly!” Sammy said. He was sure that Dean could figure it out. Dean knew everything, and if Dean didn’t then Daddy did or knew someone who could teach them.

Dean scrunched up his face and thought really hard, and then it hit him. He hadn’t seen two faces. Sammy must have been ‘seeing’ again, like he did when he saw guardian angels. All he had seen was a normal person. He hadn’t even known that the person wasn’t a person but a monster until he had gotten up to chase them. What was really ugly, and had a disguise that made it look human, and had silvery, flashy eyes? “It’s a ‘shifter!” Dean exclaimed excited.

“But we don’t have any silver bullets or guns and Daddy only lets me practice shooting his guns anyway,” Sammy pointed out.

“Yeah, but we do have silver knives, and I know that if you shove a knife in just the right way you can stick the knife in the heart and that’s what kills the ‘shifters, silver in the heart.” Dean whispered.

“We can’t get that close, Dean. ‘Shifters are really strong!” Sammy said worried. He wouldn’t have been worried if his dad or Pastor Jim was there but they were just kids. They couldn’t over power a ‘shifter. “We should call Pastor Jim.”

“Pastor Jim can’t get here because of the storm,” Dean reminded him. He understood why Sammy was worried but they had no choice. “We’ll have to trap it.”

“Like they do on Scooby Doo?” Sammy said excited. He loved Scooby Doo.

“Yep, now you figure out a trap while I check on Sister Steve and Willow.”

Sister Steve had been listening to their discussion and couldn’t believe her ears. They had witnesses a murder, been chased across the airport and now were discussing what a possessed person looked like and how to kill something called a shifter? And what did they mean they were going to have to trap the shifter? What was going on?


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter Seven

Ray Kowalski was one of the uniformed cops assigned to the airport today. His precinct took care of supplying uniforms for any emergencies during bad weather. There were always at least one or two and it made sense to assign someone there rather than having to send someone out into a storm just to get there. He didn’t expect to find a murder. A brawl or a domestic dispute yeah, but not a murder.

The dead security guard wasn’t the first stiff he’d ever seen, but it was still enough to get his stomach moving and not in a good way. “Ok, so this pastor calls you and says he was talking to this kid and the kid said he was in trouble and was forced to hang up. You tell him you’d check it out and you find the body,” he said going back over his notes.

James nodded. Never had he been more grateful that the Chicago Police Department sent out a few cops to his airport every time there was a bad storm than he was right now. “We sent out an alert to all of our security and other employees. Sister Stephanie from St. George’s church and three kids, two boys and one girl, Dean and Sammy Winchester, ages eleven and seven and Willow Rosenburg, age nine, were all in here waiting for the storm to stop. The Sister was going to take the boys down to the church and we were waiting for an authorized adult to pick up Miss Rosenburg. Someone saw them running through the concourse about fifteen minutes ago. They ran down an escalator, jumped up on a luggage carrousel and slipped into the luggage sorting area. They were being chased by a large man. We’re still getting descriptions of the man and I’ve got people searching the area for the Sister and the kids.”

“Sister Stephanie?” Ray perked up. He gave the security chief a description, “Young, about twenty five, white, blue eyes, red hair?”

“I think so. They were in here playing cards,” James waved his hands at the table. “We didn’t move or touch anything because Mitchell died here. In fact, none of us have gone closer than two feet inside the room. I didn’t want to mess up anything for you guys.”

Ray nodded and walked over to the table. It didn’t take more than a glance for him to see that the cards were from a poker game. That meant that the Sister Stephanie that was here was his old friend Steve. He remembered that she had gone and become a nun and she was the only nun that he knew of that would teach kids how to play poker. Her old man had taught them both and Steve had really had a talent for it. Her becoming a nun had made a lot of sense to him when she had gone and done it; she had always had a lot more faith than most people they knew growing up. It also made sense that she would run with the kids. She had more courage than sense and more intelligence than courage which meant that she was always getting caught up in some kind of trouble. She would do everything she could to keep those kids alive.

“Where’s the luggage sorting area?” He wasn’t going to let Steve do this on her own.

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“Ok, I get trying to trap the guy. He’s a murderer and he’s after us. I don’t think anyone is going to find us before he does.” Sister Stephanie shifted a sleeping Willow in her arms as Dean and Sammy picked the locks on the luggage and searched for things to make a trap. “But why are you talking about possessions and shifters? What is a shifter? And why do you need to kill one?”

Dean turned with a grim look on his face, “Monsters and other stuff are real, including real possessions by real demons. A ‘shifter is a shapeshifter and the reason we know that they’re real is because our father hunts them. It’s the family business, hunting things and saving people. Pastor Jim knows about them too and helps our dad when he can. He’s the one who taught our dad the special prayers you need to do an exorcism on a possessed person and the prayers you need to send minor demons back to hell. Dad has also taught us how to deal with monsters like shapeshifters. He’s hunting a Rawhead and Bloodybones right now. It has killed a lot of people in the last few years.”

“Are you serious?” Sister Steve looked Dean right in the eyes. She had learned a lot about Dean’s ability to bluff while they were playing but she could see no sign of anything but deadly seriousness. She couldn’t believe it, he really was serious. The longer she looked the more she was convinced. Kids like Dean didn’t live in a fantasy land. They had to be well grounded in reality to survive. When you didn’t know where your next meal was coming from you had to know a lot about how the world worked to make sure that you and those you cared about ate.

Dean knew that Pastor Jim had placed Sister Steve under his protection and as his dad said; sometimes you can’t protect someone if they don’t know what they were being protected from. “Yes Sister Steve, I am serious. Rawhead and Bloodybones eat children. That’s why Dad sent us to stay with Pastor Jim; it was too dangerous for me and Sammy to be anywhere near one. Sammy especially needs to be protected. He’s got gifts that bad monsters and stuff really, really like.” He looked at his little brother sadly. “A demon tried to get to him and my mom died protecting him. That’s how we got started hunting. Lots of other monsters and stuff think he’d be great to eat too. I think it’s because they think he tastes better or something.”

He sighed and got back on track. “Shapeshifters are killers. Once they start hunting you, they don’t stop. The only way to stop one is to kill it and the only way you can kill it is to penetrate the heart with silver. The best way to do that is to shoot it with silver bullets, but we don’t have any. All we have are two silver knives.” Dean showed her his knife.

“Dean, here’s some fishing line!” Sammy showed his brother.

“Good, now write down the stuff on the tag so we can give it back when we’re done or get the person some new fishing line.” Sammy nodded and after handing the fishing line to Dean, pulled out a small notebook and pencil. Dean wasn’t about to steal, borrow yes, but not steal. He would give the list to Pastor Jim when they were done. He knew that Pastor Jim could help them replace anything that needed to be. He looked at the small pile of stuff at his feet. They were going to need a lot more stuff to make their trap but the fishing line would really come in handy.

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It didn’t take long to get a description of the man chasing Sister Steve and the kids. One of the people who had witnessed the chase had recognized the man. He was a clerk over at one of the little shops that sold souvenirs, books, games, and light munchies for travelers. Armed with this information, Kowalski and Jacobs (one of the other two uniforms there at the airport today) quickly headed to the luggage handling area. They also had the security staff’s walkie talkie frequency and one of their radios.

As dangerous as it was for a police officer to work alone, they were each taking one side of the luggage handling area and working their way inward in a search pattern. The only backup they had were the security officers who were searching as well. Ray didn’t know whether or not to be relieved that the security guards didn’t have guns. One the one hand these guys were civilians and didn’t have any real training as far as he knew. On the other hand they were chasing a killer after a nun and three little kids. It all sucked.

"You can't get away from me!" he heard from up ahead of him. Ray threw his hand back at the security officers and took off running. When he turned the corner at first glance he couldn't believe what he saw. When he thought about it much later he did come to believe it, knowing the lady in question. Sister Steve, his old time friend and sometime poker buddy, was running from a knife wielding maniac and jumping onto a skateboard, a very strategically placed skateboard he was later to find out.

The man behind her slipped on an oil slick as he ran after her, even as Ray brought up his gun to shoot. Before he could fire, two small boys jumped up from behind a stack of luggage whirling something over their heads. They let go and the things shot out and wrapped around the maniac, tying him up tighter than Ray's mother did people with guilt trips. The maniac fell to the floor, losing his grip on the knife. As he did so, the boys ran over to their captive and Ray saw something he had never wanted to see. The oldest boy ran a knife right into the man's guts and if the angle that Ray saw was right, then it had gone straight into the guy's heart.

It had happened to fast for Ray to stop them. 'Oh God, that poor kid' was all he could think as he ran over. Then the younger boy did something he would never forget as long as he lived. He peeled the dead man's face right off. What was underneath was so horribly distorted and warped that Ray turned away and threw up. That was when the kids noticed him.

"You kids ok?" he asked gasping. He swore he would never watch an autopsy if he could get away with it. That was so disgusting. "Here, gimme that," he said to the little boy. He took the skin with two fingers and laid it off to the side. He touched the side of the man's neck just as a formality.

"He's dead, dude," the older boy said sarcastically.

"I know that, but I gotta do it because those are the rules," Ray said. He wiped his hands on his uniform pants. "Dean and Sammy Winchester, I presume?"

"Yes sir," the boys answered in unison just as Sister Steve rode the skateboard back. She popped it up expertly and knelt down next to Dean.

"What was that you guys threw at him?" Ray asked as he looked at what was wrapped around the corpse's upper body and legs. It looked like fishing line to him.

"Bolos made from fishing line and balls," Sammy said excitedly. "Dean showed me how to make mine. Daddy showed him how to make them last summer. Did you know that you can hunt deer with them?"

'Among other things,' Dean thought. He'd been aiming for a kelpie and had hit the deer on the other side of the pond. It wasn't his fault that he'd missed. ‘At least the deer had made a good dinner after they'd gotten the kelpie.'

"Well, you two did real good. I'm sorry I didn't get here sooner so I could take care of him for you. Now, where is Willow Rosenberg?" he asked hoping that the little girl was alright as well.

"I'll go get her, Ray," Sister Steve said. "We had her stashed with a pool que while we took care of this."

"You and Willow ok Steve?" She nodded as she got up. "Thank God for that. Ok, you go and get her. Chief James, have one of your people take Sister Steve and the kids back to your office. I'll get started on securing the crime scene here."

Ray pulled Dean off to the side a little ways, keeping an eye on the security chief who was with Sammy. "Can you tell me what happened? I saw the end, but I need to know what led up to it," he asked.

Dean shrugged. "That guy came in and killed the security guard while I was on the phone. We ran out and he came after us. We hid and we didn't think anyone would find us before he did so we set a trap. The knife I used on him was supposed to be a gift for Pastor Jim from my dad. He sent it as a thank you for taking us in while he's working on a job. Pastor Jim collects stuff like that," he lied. He knew that sometimes a Hunter had to lie to police because they couldn't handle the truth about monsters and ghosts and stuff. He also remembered the lecture his father had given him on the subject. Lies were only to be told when absolutely necessary. It was 100 pushups and kp for a month if his dad ever found out that he had lied when it wasn't necessary. Dean hated kitchen patrol with a passion.

"Why did you kill him?" Ray asked gently. He didn't want the kid to think that he was putting him down for something he had already told him was a good thing. "Why didn't you wait once you had him tied up?"

"He was going to kill Sammy and the ladies," Dean growled. "And I wasn't sure the bolos would hold him." He hadn't been sure. Some ‘shifters had supernatural strength and if this one had that it could have burst the bonds.

"That is a very good reason Dean. Like I said before, good job," Ray said as he clapped him on the shoulder.

Just then Sammy scurried over, with the chief right behind him. "Mr. Policeman, you need a copy of this list. It has the names and addresses of the people whose stuff we borrowed to make our trap." Sammy thrust the by now much battered list at Ray.

"Thank you Sammy," Ray said impressed. It wasn't every kid who would have thought about that or every adult either. These were a couple of very honest kids. He wondered if he could get someone to give these two a medal or certificate or something.

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It was a week later when John finally showed up at Pastor Jim's. He was exhausted but happy. He had killed the Rawhead and rescued not one child but two. He had stayed only long enough to make sure that they would both be alright before taking off for Chicago to get back to his boys. It was late at night and the boys were down in bed when he arrived. Pastor Jim was glad because it gave him a chance to tell John what had happened out at the airport.

As he told the story he could see the fire in John's eyes burn but John let him get the story out before saying a word. "I honestly didn't think they would be in any danger John. I never would have sent Sister Steve out there to pick up the boys if I had. I would have gone myself loaded down with every weapon I have."

"I know you would have Jim. And the boys did good, protecting themselves and the girls." John paused. This is what all of the training he was putting his boys through was all about. So that if necessary, they could protect themselves and others from what was out there in the dark. In a better world, one without real demons and monsters of all kinds, there wouldn't have been a problem. "Is Dean in trouble with the cops?"

Pastor Jim grinned. The explosion he was waiting for didn't happen. It had to be because the boys were safe and John was about to drop. There was no other explanation. "No, in fact, they showed up here and gave Dean and Sammy an award each for heroism."

They both laughed at that. "If they only knew," John said as he raised his glass. "To the heroes of the Hunt." Pastor Jim clinked glasses with him and settled in for a quiet night. Tomorrow would be soon enough to take up their task once more.

The End


End file.
